


A TOUR OF PHOENIX DOWNS

by rameseas



Series: VIVA [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Real World, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Crossover, Existentialism, Exposition, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Slice of Life, fandoms to be added as they appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:17:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rameseas/pseuds/rameseas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phoenix Downs - a coastal, semi-suburban island town holding hands with a dense grouping of tiny mountains - could easily be described as heavenly, given its pleasant humid subtropical climate and the beauty that pervades its streets, its sights, and its various districts, but to some of its inhabitants, it is much more like purgatory or limbo - the geographical equivalent of a tightrope line on which approximately five-hundred and twenty ex-heroes, villains, and adventurers currently idle, their bridge between one fantastic world and, quite possibly, the next.</p><p> <i>PART OF <b>VIVA</b>: A <b>FINAL FANTASY + KINGDOM HEARTS</b> REINCARNATION AU</i><br/>( <i>note</i>: each chapter is standalone and functions as a separate fic with separate characters, pairings, etc; please read author's notes  )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the beach; the sun is an indecisive one

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [FUGUE: or, IN THIS HOLLOW VALLEY](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177458) by [rameseas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rameseas/pseuds/rameseas). 



> so, uh. notes.
> 
> i'm gonna jump right in and say that this whole thing is basically my method of exploring the physical environment of this verse, both for myself and for you readers. each chapter will cover a new location in phoenix downs and feature different (sometimes recurring) characters, situations, etc. i'm probably not going to get to every single location in phoenix downs just because there are only so many unique situations i can come up with, but we'll see! not every chapter is required reading and i give you free reign to skip around to whatever chapters involve the characters/pairings you're interested in, but i would appreciate it a whole lot if you took this in full. 
> 
> also! the introductory fic to this verse is **[FUGUE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4177458)**. i'm going to grudgingly say that that isn't required reading either, but i _highly_ recommend reading it in order to understand this verse.
> 
> lastly, **[here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mqg0d5znJ0WPEZNbj69u_ZiEY7d-8jIxz8tjszmXWiY/edit?usp=sharing)** is a google doc filled with some background information about phoenix downs. you can use this, if you'd like, to see which locations i may do chapters on in the future.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’ve never quite been able to shake off their attachment to the beach and the way it makes them feel brand new again, the way it takes them far across the eternal expanse of space and time, back to Destiny Islands and paopu fruit and meteor showers and _home_ , back to the fantastic lives they lived before – now a mere footnote in their entirely mundane existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **characters featured in this chapter** : sora, kairi  
>  **pairings featured in this chapter** : sora/kairi, pre-relationship mostly  
>  **song for this chapter** : [talk of the town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nPFirGlffc), jack johnson
> 
> i'm not sure why i defaulted to not specifying their names outside of dialogue, but it just felt right?  
> i apologize in advance if sora's characterization seems kind of weird in that it's a bit quieter than it would be otherwise? i have this subtle headcanon that kairi subdues sora's personality some just by sheer virtue of how he feels about her, and a lot of their scenes together in kh and kh2 seem to support that somehow

She likes watching the ocean eat the sun, he’s noticed.

Her eyes start swimming with this half-there, dreamy sort of wistfulness whenever they’re here and that yellow-orange bouncy ball begins its daily descent into the rose-and-violet watery abyss, first touching its toes to the surface, testing the water’s temperature before it decides to take the plunge. The sun is an indecisive one, he thinks – it always takes its time painstakingly lowering its awkward mass into the ocean, as if it’s never quite sure how it feels about taking a dip until it’s already drowning.

He’d be totally cool with enjoying the show and entertaining slightly gruesome thoughts such as these, he really would, were his stomach not loudly threatening to mutiny the ship of his body and begin its ravenous consumption of the rest of his internal organs at the moment.

“I’m hungry.”

“Eat a Snickers,” she says, distracted.

“Those commercials stopped being funny months ago and I ate the last one like ten minutes after we got here,” is his slightly disgruntled but not altogether heated retort. He opens the mouth of her oversized floral tote and shows her its contents for proof, jabbing an emphatic finger at the surplus of hair scrunchies, the colorful issue of _Elle_ , the wallet with bicycles on it, and the mess of crumpled candy wrappers crammed inside. “See?”

With the slightest air of affectionate impatience, she jerks her gaze away from the slowly-disappearing sun to survey the innards of her bag, roots around in the clutter for a couple of seconds just to confirm the foodstuff vacuum he’s testified to. His stomach emits a low, rather menacing growl all the while, providing an appropriate soundtrack to her search.

“I knew I should have just thrown the whole bag in here,” she sighs, then gives him this look filled with equal amounts of adoration and exasperation. “It’s like being friends with a grizzly bear, with you.”

“Including the amazing bear _hugs_ , right?” He doesn’t wait for her to reply, just up and throws his arms around her like lean brown vines and brings her up into the most ridiculously tight, ridiculously ursine embrace he can manage. It’s a pleasure like absolutely nothing else to hear the surprised little squeal that escapes her in response, feel her soft, toned body struggle against his own for freedom – lower arms flailing, slim torso twisting, tiptoes wriggling desperately in the direction of the earth.

“Put me _down_ , oh my _God!_ ” She’s screeching like a banshee, but there’s a high, giggling laugh threading and bobbing through her words like a wild deer and it’s a goddamn _symphony_ to his ears on par with Debussy and Mozart, not to mention just as lovely and free.

“But I _looove_ you!” He draws the words out like an impish child would (and who’s to say he’s ever stopped being one, even as impossibly old as he is), tightens his hold on her the teeniest, tiniest bit and pushes his nose into the sweet-smelling, candy red bob of her hair. She got a haircut last Wednesday, which is kind of a shame since he _really_ liked her hair when it was long enough for him to failingly attempt to braid and be stupidly distracted by all through their sixth period English class, where he sits behind her and frowns whenever he notices goosebumps sprouting all over her arms in the cold of the often too-intense air conditioner – but it’s not too big a deal when he’s pretty sure he’d love her hair no matter _what_ she did with it, even if she shaved it all off.

He is struck lightning-like with the thought of her smooth, bald head, with the thought of pressing his lips to the crown of it.

“I love you too, Sora, but I also love standing on my own two feet.” When their faces pull apart in near-comical unison so that they may look at one another, take each other in, her expression goes sharp and knowing in that birdlike way of hers, that smart way that so often comes over her when they’re in class or she’s about to verbally eviscerate some subject or another, and she asks him – with almost bewildering suddenness – “What are you thinking?”

“What?” He smiles at the question, caught off guard and laughing half-on accident at its distinctly abrupt quality.

“You got that look on your face,” she replies, still suspended several inches off the ground and hanging slightly limp in his grasp. “The one you get when you’ve just thought of something silly.”

“I was thinking about you being bald.” When she snorts at him, amused more than she is irritated, he puts his nose back in her hair and inhales its citrusy scent. “And how I probably wouldn’t mind it if you shaved your head.”

“You almost _cried_ when I got my haircut,” she pointedly remarks.

“I thought I smelled onions.” He adjusts his grip around her, bending his knees and bouncing her upwards to counteract the minor slippage that has occurred since he first scooped her up, and his voice is just barely edged with a _whine_ when he pleads, “Can we go eat now? I think my stomach just started in on my spleen.”

Her deep mauve eyes – warm, pillow-soft as always – lurch momentarily back in their sockets. She sighs, “Oh, _okay_ ,” and the way she tilts her head with the exhalation makes her jaw look especially smooth and especially beautiful, beautiful enough for him to want to kiss – but that’s something he doesn’t do.

Instead, he hoists her up and carries her piggyback-style to the edge of the beach. There are tiny food stalls scattered like throwing stones all along the boardwalk that cater to peckish beachgoers like him – at her urging, he heads for the one serving seafood plate lunches and decorated with obnoxious neon palm trees and luminescent mermaids.

And while he walks – sandaled feet digging shallow depressions into the soft, powdery sand and hands hooked beneath her knees, gently touching the balmy, slightly damp skin inside them – she talks to him, wraps her arms littered with freckles around his neck and muses aimlessly about the state of their surroundings, their shared social life, and their singularly unique existences as she’s often wont to when she has his back and his ears all to herself.

“Hayner was talking about throwing a beach party yesterday at lunch,” she says. “Were you at the table when he brought it up? I’m pretty sure you were still making up that English test for Mr. Harvey.”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“He said he wanted to have a bonfire, but I feel like that might be kind of dangerous? I mean… I don’t really know whether we count as minors or adults or what, but constructing a bonfire without adult supervision seems kind of risky.”

“Maybe Roxas will bring Axel and _he_ can supervise.”

“That’s not funny.” She’s snickering as she says it, though, and he can feel the motion of it against the hypersensitive skin and lean muscles of his back – her body jumping and vibrating with amusement, arms involuntarily tightening into the warmest, most welcome noose around his neck with her laughter – and really, this is the kind of closeness he _adores_ sharing with her, the kind that makes his bloodstream buzz and his mind well up all river-like with memories of them and the two pasts they share.

They’ve been like this for as long as he can remember, and it’s more than simply _surreal_ to look back and realize that he’s known her for over a lifetime when she’s sitting beside him in his bed and helping him with his _tenth grade math_ _homework_ , when they’re going through their second entirely too awkward adolescence and there’s still this loud, obnoxious part of him that starts throwing up huge red stop signs whenever he so much as _thinks_ about touching her, about _kissing_ her –

And it isn’t as if he hasn’t kissed her before, when they were warriors and she was magical in the most literal of senses and he was smarting from the particularly vicious ass-whooping she’d handed to him after a few rounds of Keyblade training – it wasn’t as if then, sitting side-by-side under the shade of some towering tree and sharing a half-drained bottle of water, he hadn’t pressed his lips to her sweat-slick cheek and tasted the salty moisture there, and she hadn’t smiled and asked him what took him so long, and they hadn’t become so purely and so chastely loving with one another from that point onwards, sharing kisses like words and like bread and like breath –

It’s just too _strange_ now, and they’re sixteen years-old all over again, and he doesn’t know what she wants to do with this life now that she has it, so he wouldn’t dare ruin things for her by getting cocky and presumptuous. She’s far too special for that.

“Your hair smells good.” Her cheek is pressed against the crown of his head, her hands loose fists bouncing against his collarbone with his every step. “Have you been stealing Riku’s shampoo again?”

And she teases him, and she laughs at him, and it’s _torture_ , it really is, but he’s _adored_ her from the moment he first set eyes on her a whole damn eternity ago, so he doesn’t mind it _at all_ –

“Why’d you get so quiet, Sora?”

And she _knows_ him – _God_ , she **_knows_** him like the back of her eyelids, so much it threatens to scare the pants off of him when they’re this close.

“Sorry,” he chuckles, sheepish in the wet puppy dog way he always is. “Got kinda lost in thought.”

“Well, don’t do that again.” She’s sliding carefully off of his back and reaching around to extract her wallet from her tote bag – they’ve reached _Costa Del Seafood_ by now, see – and as she approaches the counter, with her newly short hair that still bewilders him just a little bit, she gives him this faintly shy smile that he’s seen about a thousand times and has never really fallen out of love with or tired of, and says, “I’d miss you if you did.”

There are tiny, winged kings and queens in his gut – he feels them fluttering around in there, quietly bickering for territory.

Near the boardwalk, there is a towering, dauntingly beautiful marble statue of the goddess Shiva that watches over the shore with blank, stony eyes. At its base, the two of them sit, eating fish and chips out of Styrofoam and sipping from the canned sodas they got from the vending machine next to the seafood shack.

“You have a li’l…” She trails off in favor of simply dabbing the stray spot of ketchup from the corner of his mouth with the tip of her French fry. His mouth falls open with a near-audible _thunk_.

“I can’t believe you just stole from me!” he gasps, pressing an open palm to his bare chest in a blatant show of outrage. “The betrayal! The _disgrace_ –!”

“ _Here_ , silly.” Giggling softly, she dips the fattest French fry she can pick out into their shared mound of ketchup and offers it up for him to take. “A truce?”

For a moment, he pretends to mull over the olive branch with the gravest consideration – screwing his mouth up in mock-thought and pinching his chin with a theatrical ‘ _hmmm_ ’ – but when she feints like she’s going to just eat the fry herself, he snatches a hand out to grab her wrist and plucks the fried potato from her fingers with his teeth, gobbles it up in an almost canine fashion, with smacking jaws and a swiping tongue to clean up the mess of salt and grease he’s left on his lips.

“ _God_ , you’re a trip,” she laughs, high and buoyant like soap suds. She doesn’t pull her wrist out of his grasp, just lets him shift his fingers so that they’re not gripping her so tightly, but instead fidgeting idly with her thin elastic bracelet.

The sky above is painted like a Monet. A gradient of purples, pinks, and blues stretches over Phoenix Downs and its darkening beach like the huge parachute they used to play with in elementary school gym class. For some reason, he thinks of that thing all the time, thinks of ballooning it full of air with his classmates and sitting on its inner edges with his two best friends at each side, thinks of the strangely wondrous thing of playing with an oversized, clown-colored polyester circle as if it’s the most enchanting object he’s ever encountered – how odd is it, with all the marvelous things he’s seen, to still be held captive and enthralled by something so silly and so trivial?

Riku doesn’t understand it. Kairi, though…

“Aren’t we lucky to have ended up here?” she says with her gaze fixed on that setting sun, its bright, burning corona making its final descent into the ocean.

“What do you mean?” he asks. Her eyes are just beginning to swim now, and he’s noticed how much she likes watching the ocean eat the sun countless times before, but every time he bears witness to it, he’s just as surprised and awed by the quiet beauty of the spectacle as he was the time before.

“We’re islanders.” In his hand, she turns her wrist – thoughtless, unconscious – brings her palm to face the sky without actually thinking about it, if the unwavering focus on her face is anything to go on. “Most of the other people here, they came from big cities or country towns. For us, though – this is a lot like what we had back then.”

“You came from a big city, too, though,” he points out, just this shy of impish.

“I was born in one, yeah,” she concedes with a chuckle, breaking off from the sun for just a moment to toss a brief glance in his direction. “But Destiny Islands was always my home.” The barest of sighs escapes her – a summer breeze like the one they’ve been dying for since the school year began – and she says, “Being near the ocean again just seems like a strange sort of blessing, you know?”

With her hand in his and her being so close, he would certainly agree.

Together, over the last dregs of their cream sodas, they watch the light disappear into the sea and the entirety of the coast turn blue-violet, the stars poking tiny holes of light into the dark quilt of the nascent night sky. They should be going home to their parent-siblings now, both of them know it, but –

 _But_.

But they’ve never quite been able to shake off their attachment to the beach and the way it makes them feel brand new again, the way it takes them far across the eternal expanse of space and time back to Destiny Islands and paopu fruit and meteor showers and _home_ , back to the fantastic lives they lived before – now a mere footnote in their entirely mundane existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is kind of a mess, sorry  
> comments, questions, and criticism are all welcome, babes ♥
> 
> (also, just - please google 'gym class parachute' if you weren't/aren't sure what i was referring to in the fic)


	2. seventh heaven; the weather has been beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn’t be entirely truthful to claim that Reno gets under Zack’s skin because of his awfulness and perpetual hostility alone – it’s not just that, it’s not even _primarily_ that. It’s also the fact that the man’s mere presence does wonders to remind Zack of all the ways in which he fucked up, _bad_ , came _so_ close to ruining huge, gaping chunks of his life and losing a whole lot of the people he held and still holds dearly in his heart. There are so many small reflections of the ugliest parts of himself stuck with gorilla glue all over Reno’s face and body, and most days (like today), Zack simply can’t stand to see them without unwittingly falling into them. 
> 
> Most days, the him he sees in them is just too hideous to bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **characters featured in this chapter** : zack, reno, tifa, cid; barret, lulu, and reeve in the background  
>  **pairings featured in this chapter** : mentions of past zack/reno and current zack/cloud and rude/tifa  
>  **songs for this chapter** : [save room](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VhRhqJA0k), john legend / [stir it up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3UqvWk8-uw), bob marley and the wailers
> 
> naughty language is in this bit, head's up

It’s a quarter after five when the rat shows up.

Telltale golden swords of late afternoon sunlight glide over the Japanese restaurant across the street and cut through the decidedly spacious front windows of the bar – currently host to only four individuals, given the relatively early hour and the fact that it’s _Tuesday_ – when like the ominous toll of a church bell or the sudden-yet-creeping smell of rancid meat rotting in the back of a refrigerator, _he_ shows up – trailing tobacco smoke, slinking across the dark, recently-waxed red birch floors roach-like and without any discernible purpose.

Zack doesn’t see him at first – he’s too busy picking out that half-drained bottle of Absolut from the drink rack behind the bar and reminding himself for maybe the eighth time in a row that _he needs to go get a new one out the back_ to notice him – but as he’s mixing Barret’s second screwdriver on the small counter installed for just that purpose, he catches a whiff of menthol and onion rings from Burger King and _knows_ just like that that the evening’s entertainment has arrived.

He puts on his best _casual, but not overly pleased_ smile. Braces himself. Looks, offhanded, over at the framed posters of the Lord Vishnu and the Dalai Lama hanging on the eastern wall of the bar and blinks warmly at them like he would old friends, then –

“Here’s your drink, Barret.” Places the highball down on the far end of the bar, where Barret can easily cross the few steps over from his booth in the corner to retrieve it, then lets his gaze trip as if accidentally over the scarlet-haired mongoose idling with a half-burnt cigarette dangling from his lips a good four feet away. His smile doesn’t falter when he says, “Oh, hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” Reno’s eyes – always skittish, always suspiciously similar to small, turquoise potato-peelers – rake briefly over Zack’s three year-old _Phoenix Downs Spring Fling_ t-shirt and visibly aged, holey jeans – and _ugh_ , that would be an extremely distinct _skin-crawl_ , thank you very much – for a moment that’s almost indiscernible in its quickness and its subtlety before he’s asking, pulling the cigarette from his lips and exhaling a cloud of smoke that drifts over Zack like _horror movie fog_ , “What’s shakin’, kid?”

Zack shrugs one muscled shoulder – slow, sluggish – then the other. “The usual.” With an ease that’s just about as forced as it is natural, he glides along the bar until he stands nearly face-to-face with the dragon (the scrawny, sniveling dragon with dull scales and needle-like talons), glancing mostly nonchalantly at the brass, cat-shaped clock that hangs over the front door, its hands clapping at him for this performance of levelheaded pleasantness he’s putting on.

He doesn’t very much like acting.

“Oh?” And that right there is _all_ theatrics, Zack knows it like breathing – eyes blown melodramatically wide so as to appear innocently inquisitive, thin lips a small, almost feminine ‘ _o_ ’ – and Reno is rising up from where he’d been leaning with his elbows against the smooth mahogany bar to attempt direct eye-to-eye contact (which he’s _always_ failed at, given Zack’s three inches on him in height and his own propensity to avoid looking anyone in the face), drawling, “Your life that boring, ah?”

“I wouldn’t call it boring,” is Zack’s pointedly laid-back reply, delivered with a soft, pleased smile that’s only strange in that were he talking to anyone else, it would be a full-blown grin by this point _definitely_. “Just comfortable.”

“Didn’t think you were the comfortable type,” Reno says, but before Zack is forced to put his head down on the bar or _willfully implode_ so as to remove himself from this _unbearable_ bullshit film noir conversation – too full of double-entendres and unspoken things and the sort of raw cotton-tension that makes him nostalgic about things like _death_ – Tifa emerges from the back room with a bottle of lemon Pine-Sol and an old rag ripped from a flannel shirt in her hands, looking altogether like _Wonder Woman_ in Zack’s eyes.

“Look who’s here!” It’s amazing, the way Reno’s eyes light up like a marksman’s would, perhaps, at the arrival of a potential new target. “It’s Missus Rude herself, and lookin’ so fine an’ lovely, too!”

“I _own_ this joint,” Tifa points out, unamused for the most part… but with the slightest smirk that gives her away. “I’m _always_ here.”

“And aren’t we so lucky to have you,” Reno says, practically purring and soothing like a damn _cactus_ , “To fuel our alcoholism and give us somethin’ nice to look at in this shithole town?”

 _Phoenix Downs is beautiful_ , Zack thinks, instinctively defensive. His fingers are pulled to a smudged glass he’s been keeping behind the bar with him for no other reason than because he keeps forgetting to actually _do_ anything with it, so he takes it into his hands and seeks out his favorite dishcloth, the rainbow-colored one that makes him very nonviolent.

Tifa, bless her soul, opens her arms in a wordless display of ‘ _what can I say?_ ’. “I aim to please,” she says, and Zack would happily marry this woman and worship at her feet, he really would.

“Speakin’ of pleasin’…” The redhead cuts his eyes at Zack and his glass-washing at that, just for a moment or so, then zeroes back in on Tifa with all the lethal focus of a lioness on the prowl, plopping down onto a leather-seated barstool and making himself comfortable. “How ‘bout a status report on your thing with my man Rude? You kids havin’ fun?”

“Sure, _Dad_ ,” Tifa chuckles. Smiling her Mona Lisa number – the one she and Cloud share, the one Zack is almost entirely certain they developed and perfected together in their first youth – she uncaps the Pine-Sol, presses her rag to the mouth of it, and gingerly reverses the bottle to soak some of the cleaner into the cloth, then – “We’re pretty happy.”

“You treatin’ him good in the sack?” And Zack might’ve fumbled his glass and had the damn thing shattering to pieces if he weren’t almost reflexively prepared for some shit like that to come flying out of this crazy man’s mouth. A smirk is edging its way around Reno’s mouth, his eyes are sparkling, almost _elated_ with the sheer thing of his own clever nastiness, and he’s got that wild predator look on his face as he watches Tifa watch him with vaguely shocked, but still unamused eyes from across the bar and says, “M’sure with your figure, you don’t even have to worry ‘bout moves or nothin’, ah?”

For exactly five near-silent ticks of that brass cat clock, Tifa is wordless – putting the Pine-Sol down, lowering her rag to the slightly grimy bartop, rubbing the cleaner in in steadily broadening circles – and Zack can just _feel_ the fiendish delight coming off of Reno in thick, heady waves at her hesitation to reply.

He’s really familiar with that, you see. When they were in high school and their craziness existed more or less on the same page (or at least within the same chapter), he’d get high off of it like sniffing glue when they’d skip class to buy Twinkies from the convenience store and cut up like fools during rehearsals for the theatre department’s various productions. Upon graduation, their fun took the form of joyriding in Reno’s bright orange Passat through Destiny Heights and the snickering, simpering, spring-loaded sort of joking around they’d engage in between themselves and their collective social circle – teasing Cissnei about her ridiculous drunken behavior the night before, blasting R. Kelly and begging with puppylike eyes for Aerith to dance with them, ‘ _just one song, pretty please?_ ’, working on Barret’s nerves because nothing in the _world_ was funnier than the possibility of getting the wind knocked out of them by that _huge_ , hilariously _strong_ mountain of a man – and every time they were together, that distinctly devious vibe would buzz right off of Reno and onto Zack and cover them both like neon and lightning, have them hundreds of miles off the ground in their exhilaration and their glee.

Zack remembers it too from the times they shared dark, electric glances and played at keeping secrets and lying to all of their friends. He used to be the thing that brought out the wickedly laughing, sharply smirking devil in Reno the very most – _especially_ when it was dark, _especially_ when he was an idiot, and _especially_ when the two of them were alone…

“If you want to know so much, why don’t you ask _him?_ ” is what comes out of Tifa’s mouth when she finally brings it upon herself to dignify Reno’s shitheadedness with a response.

Reno, naturally, looks as though he expected her to say something like that.

“You know Rude, he’s like a fuckin’ sphinx.” He shakes his head, doglike and apparently oblivious to the cigarette burning dangerously close to his fingers until he brings it to his lips for a quick drag, adding, “Doesn’t let on shit.”

Tifa raises one slim, incredulous eyebrow and gives the man a look that practically _screams_ , ‘ _Are you kidding me?_ ’, snorts, “And you thought _I_ would?”

“You’re sentimental, ah? Romantic.” Reno reaches across the bartop to grind his pretty much finished cigarette out into a handily-placed crystal ashtray, smoke billowing from his nostrils and mouth almost like smog, how much the image reeks of pollution and decay. When his eyes fall back upon Tifa and her quite calm bar-cleaning, they are knives Zack is more than used to identifying, deflecting, and occasionally crossing blades with – but he happens to be one of the only people in possession of such familiarity, unfortunately, and he’s not looking at those twin daggers when the man suckers Tifa with a deceptively cheery, “Thought you’d be a total chatterbox about your first successful relationship in _eight-hundred years_ , considerin’ how that last love affair of yours wasn’t the _least_ bit memorable.”

And well, _shit_. The rat sort of has a point.

Like they’re in a goddamn _movie_ , the whole of the bar – which was already fairly quiet, considering that only Barret, Lulu, and Reeve occupy the space in their regular corner near the jukebox – conveniently falls nearly-silent upon that particularly glass-edged quip, and Zack’s hands are going frighteningly tight around the far-too clean glass in their grasp and his face is screwing up into something pained and cartoonish like it would if he just stepped on a Lego or something, and he’s looking Reno right in his smug shit-eating face and saying with so much forced insouciance it makes his _stomach_ hurt, “ _Yikes_. Let’s lighten up on the subtle-yet-personal insults, huh, Reno?”

Tifa, though? Doesn’t seem too bothered.

“No, Zack,” she chuckles from her end of the bar, dismissively waving the hand not currently occupied with her cleaning rag. “He’s _adorable_.” She smiles amused and jubilant and _breathtakingly_ sarcastic at her fellow bartender, puts lightning bugs in his gut just with how damn _sexy_ that is. “Don’t you know I live on all his pathetic attempts to hurt my feelings? He just tries so _hard_.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Reno snaps, suddenly all fresh out of _giddy_. “You look like my asshole.”

Tifa’s counter is just as swift and sharp – she coos, “ _Ooh_ , nice and bleached.”

The noise that comes out of Zack in response can almost qualify as a bona fide _holler_ , a human car horn, a honk damn near _elephantine_ in nature. Without restraint or shame, he _laughs_ – full-bellied, rolling like thunder – has to brace his hand against the edge of the bar and push his face _hard_ into his palm in order to even _somewhat_ compose himself, and just as soon as he’s sure he’s gotten a grip, he thinks, ‘ _ooh, nice and bleached_ ’ and he’s fucking _gone_ again, internally asking no one in particular whether there’s some kind of official award for best comeback _in history_ and where in the hell he can sign Tifa up for that shit.

It’s in the middle of this miniature spectacle that the front door swings open and in steps Cid, whose expression immediately takes on a rather comically perplexed quality at the sight of Zack veritably _losing his shit_ at the bar, Tifa cleaning the wood with no outward indication that she’s any way affected by or involved in her coworker/employee’s laughter-induced stroke, and Reno mostly looking like he’s just stepped in a steaming pile of dog shit.

“Do I even wanna know?” he asks, semi-irritated southern twang in full swing. Without waiting for a reply – “No, I jus’ decided I don’t. Not one fuckin’ bit.”

Tifa’s face goes all warm and molten, then – Zack has noted quite a few times that this will usually only ever happen in the presence of a member of her former world-saving squad, and he gets it, he does – there’s nothing like overthrowing an oppressive pseudo-government and rescuing an entire planet from certain destruction together to forge a friendship that rests in your very _bones_ and makes your muscles do things without even being totally aware of them, after all – and without more than a moment’s hesitation, she’s discarding her cleaning rag and wiping her hands down on the little half-apron she wears, asking, “Can I get you anything, Cid?”

“Three fingers.” The old mechanic holds up a trio of digits for emphasis as he nears Tifa’s end of the bar, fingernails audibly scratching at the stubble coating his jaws when he sighs, “You wouldn’t _believe_ the kind of fun I had at work today…”

Zack, for his part, is still over here failing _royally_ at calming the hell down, and Reno? Well, let’s just say he isn’t getting the biggest kick out of the man’s amusement.

“It wasn’t that funny,” the redhead remarks. The words come out sounding casual and glib, but Zack hears them for the childish, indignant whine they really are – he’s long had a knack for perceiving in Reno what others can’t or simply _won’t_.

Him, he snickers and slides a little further down the bar – both to give Tifa and Cid a little more physical space for their conversation, walk out of the room without actually exiting, and to put just a smidgen of distance between himself and this eight year-old he’s talking to.

“Ahh, it was _pretty_ funny,” he croons, momentarily swiping a knuckle at the corner of his eye because _yes_ , there are legit _tears_ happening right now. Feeling more like himself due to the healthy injection of humor, Zack actually _grins_ at Reno – a real, genuine _beamer_ , all sunshine and platinum – and says, entirely truthfully, “I almost wanna thank you for coming in, ‘cause otherwise that wouldn’t have happened and I wouldn’t have something to kill myself laughing over for the next week and a half.”

“Aren’t you hateful,” Reno scoffs, as if he isn’t _easily_ the most maliciously-inclined person within a five-mile radius, not to mention _the bar_.

“Like a teddy bear,” Zack delivers with a warm, rounded smirk.

It’s easy to tell that he’s fallen back – at least partially – into his comfort zone, slipped back into his own skin just a little bit, because where his smiles were cut from glass and too contained, too restrained not more than two minutes earlier, now he’s that familiar, purring beast-man that most everyone gets and flocks to wildly for his easy warmth and overwhelming similarity to Golden Retrievers. He’s Bright, Buttery Zack, with boundaries relatively low if not totally nonexistent; he’s quick to laugh and even quicker to smile; he’s almost wholly untethered from all of the dark, smolderingly angry parts of himself.

He’s feeling a tad nostalgic.

“So what are you doing here, Reno?” Instinctively, he reaches for one of the shot glasses sequestered behind the bar – he knows from experience that Reno favors something close to nine or ten on Mohs scale, like Patrón or Jack Daniel’s straight-up.

“You know me…” Seemingly feeling the effects of exposure to Zack’s true personality – an experience markedly similar to being buzzed, according to several – Reno dials his voice down from the prickly, barking thing it was before to its customary oil-slick drawl when he replies, with softer eyes, “I just got off work, m’ready to piss the rest of the day away, ah?”

“Well, that’s nice and healthy,” Zack smiles.

“I wanted to come see you.” Reno swivels his barstool around to face Zack directly as the words leave him – the soft, grating squeak of it sounding vaguely like a warning siren – props an elbow against the bar and cradles his jaw in his hand with nearly deceptive gentleness, something mostly foreign to him and his firecracker temperament. Slowly, the left corner of his lip inches upwards – he never learned how to smile with all of his mouth, see – and Zack suspects that the man is operating within the confines of his trademark policy of _partial-yet-cutting honesty_ when he looks at him and says, almost like he’s telling him a secret, “I’ve missed you, asshole.”

And you know what? Zack has missed him, too, in spite of well, _everything_. He thinks he’s going to tell him that, but –

“I’m flattered,” is what comes out of his mouth, and there isn’t enough heart in it, truth be told.

A short instance of silence passes between them in the wake of Zack’s relatively lukewarm response, out-of-place and awkward when surrounded by the _rest_ of Seventh Heaven – the laughter emerging from the booth at the southeast corner of the bar, where Barret, Lulu, and Reeve sit, drink, and talk politics; the low-key heart-to-heart Tifa and Cid are engaging in over three shots of Jack; the warm coziness of the late afternoon and the faces that smile from the walls: the Buddha and Marilyn Monroe, photographs of the once-was AVALANCHE and their closest friends in this world, candids of the bar’s frequenters and of Zack and Tifa flashing grins and sharing kisses for the camera. To a bystander, the moment would appear trivial, perhaps even comfortable, but Zack feels it like static electricity or acid rain, and really, only _he_ would after all the two of them have been through.

Reno cocks one cherry-colored eyebrow – ‘ _I see_ ’, it says – then, after a brief, uncharacteristic interlude of thought, says probably the most unnerving and unexpected thing that’s come out of him yet. ( _Yeah_. That’s still possible at this point.)

“How’s Cloud doin’?” he asks, so offhandedly that it may be hard to believe that the words shove themselves up under Zack’s skin like a trio of needles (of the scary _big_ sort, at that).

As soon as the seemingly innocuous question is out in the air, Zack’s open expression seals up _vacuum-tight_ and Tifa is tensing almost imperceptibly in his peripheral vision. Shifting his weight back onto the balls of his feet and regarding Reno’s inscrutable face with eyes only just slightly narrowed, he comes back with a marginally chilly, “Why do you ask?”

The last time Reno expressed interest in _Cloud’s_ wellbeing, a year-long engagement broke off and they very nearly had a _funeral_ on their hands. You can certainly understand why Zack’s guard has come back from being _mostly down_ to _so fucking **up**_.

For some reason, that seems to send Reno right back into the state of Schadenfreude-induced glee he’d been in before Tifa verbally _owned_ him, because he’s wearing that damned smirk of his again, the one that makes Zack _really_ want a cigarette.

“We’re _friends_ , aren’t we, Zack?” he purrs, putting deliberate, spiteful emphasis on the word ‘ _friends_ ’ because he knows they really haven’t been for about two years. “Friends talk about their significant others.” With that, he inclines his head in Zack’s direction, inviting him to tell him – “How’s yours?”

Zack blinks, expression unchanging. “Do you actually care?”

This half-snarling, unbearably puckish laugh comes out of Reno; he curls his lips back at Zack in the almost-convincing imitation of a smile. “Contrary to popular opinion,” he chuckles, “I _do_ have a heart.”

Zack snorts – short, nasty – says, “You could’ve fooled me.”

They share a charged look, then – casual to any potential onlookers, but full of so much that only they are privy to, and some things they aren’t. Years ago, if they looked at each other like that, sure as shit one of them (usually Zack) would have the other (usually Reno) by the shoulders or the neck or the mouth (usually the mouth) in nearly no time at all.

When it becomes apparent that Reno isn’t going to do anything but drill tiny holes into his face with his eyes the longer he goes without saying anything that might even remotely satisfy the man’s underhanded curiosity, Zack coaxes his face into something that appears – but isn’t actually – more receptive and concedes, “He’s fine. Cloud is fine.”

Cloud is actually dying a slow, painful death under the weight and stress of the recently-begun fall semester and the sheer thing of _raising his teenage brothers_ all on his own, but, well. Nobody but Zack and Tifa need to know that.

Reno scratches the skin near his tattoo – the one that crawls up the crest of his right cheekbone and eternally reaches in vain for his temple – with his middle finger, and while the gesture is no longer an immature display of veiled disrespect the likes of which the two of them used to afford their teachers in middle and high school, umbrage still springs up in Zack’s gut at the sight of it. The redhead’s stare is still electric and laserlike when he asks, so very blasé it has Zack _desperately_ recalling the Eightfold Path so as to keep himself from _killing_ something, maybe, “You enjoyin’ ‘im?”

Zack’s eyes are thin, his voice is hard and clipped – he bites out, using his teeth, “He’s not a recreation.”

Reno snickers, lowers his gaze to the dark, shiny bartop. “He could’ve fooled me,” he echoes, quietly cruel.

Mauve eyes open just shy of _wide_ – wide in the shocked, suddenly pissed way that crackles almost audibly in the air, flashes quick like lightning before being followed by the low, ominous rumble of thunder. Zack’s ire rears up first as Cloud’s best friend – a lifetime and a half running, that – and only second as his boyfriend, their year-long relationship having bred something fiercely-yet-familiarly protective inside him.

Any and all traces of levity in his demeanor disappear instantly at that cute little wisecrack of Reno’s. No more playing around.

“You gonna buy a drink?” Zack snaps, voice filled with about five times the severity and general _fuck you_ -ness it was before and hands plastered hard against the bartop, where they won’t snatch out and choke Reno out. “Or are you planning on continuing this whole pissant charade of yours?”

Reno, the devil _bastard_ , has the nerve to look _affronted_ with ingénue eyes and a face like a question mark. “I thought entertaining customers was in your job description, bucko,” he says.

“I don’t know if you noticed?” – his brow tightens, lowers – “But until you start a tab, you’re _not_ a customer.”

Reno’s expression turns even _more_ innocently questioning, shockingly. “What am I, then?”

“On my nerves, mostly.” Zack punctuates the retort with a soft, sweet smile that’s positively _venomous_ – the kind of smile he nearly _never_ pulls out or wears, it hurts his face so much to do so.

Reno just gives him a bright, toothy grin in reply.

“Lucky me,” he drawls, chuckling tenderly, almost affectionately. “That’s my favorite place to be, babe.” Finally – after what’s felt like whole a _geologic era_ – he rises from his stool and breaks away from the bar in the direction of the heavy mahogany door, waving lazily over his shoulder as he goes. “S’good seein’ you again, Zack.”

And with storm-darkened eyes, Zack watches the scarlet-haired rat escape, creepingly, into the dying afternoon of Phoenix Downs, full-to-overflowing with the tired sort of exasperation only Reno has ever known how to pour into him.

It wouldn’t be entirely truthful to claim that Reno gets under Zack’s skin because of his awfulness and perpetual hostility alone – it’s not just that, it’s not even _primarily_ that. It’s also the fact that the man’s mere presence does _wonders_ to remind Zack of all the ways in which he fucked up, _bad_ , came _so_ close to ruining huge, gaping chunks of his life and losing a whole lot of the people he held and still holds dearly in his heart. There are so many small reflections of the ugliest parts of himself stuck with gorilla glue all over Reno’s face and body, and most days (like today), Zack simply can’t stand to see them without unwittingly falling into them.

Most days, the him he sees in them is just too hideous to bear.

An unknown period of time later, Tifa appears at his side.

“What a shitlord,” she sighs, and the words force Zack to blink twice and see that Reeve has temporarily left his fellow drinkers to fiddle with the jukebox and Cid has slid in the booth alongside Barret, is currently howling wildly at something the man has said. Bob Marley emerges with a smooth, soulful backing chorus through the large speakers overhead – “ _Stir it up! Li’l darlin’, stir it up!_ ” – and as the music works its way into Zack’s skin, nerves, tendons and muscles, he looks down at Tifa and is greeted with her tender, sympathetic smile, her eyes that warm him so much it’s sometimes difficult not to curl up by them forever.

Tifa’s loyalty is one of those things that overwhelms and astounds Zack on a daily basis. Two years ago, he cheated on her best friend with a man that could very possibly be the Prince of Hell, and _she_ – wonder of all wonders – _doesn’t_ blame him for it.

A bit helplessly, he returns the smile she’s giving him, says, “It takes a little more than a little vermin to rile me up, mami.”

Tifa lays a hand against the sharp curve of his jaw. “And God bless you for it.” Then, she pinches at the front of his t-shirt and _pulls_ just a bit, already turning and heading for the back room. “Come on and help me get all these peanut boats out before the evening rush starts.”

Before he follows her, Zack throws a glance out the wide, yawning windows of the bar, squinting into the old golden sunlight streaming in through them. The weather has been beautiful, these past few weeks – a brief flash storm won’t do much to ruin that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't tell you how long i've been waiting to write this _oh my god_
> 
> just to clear up/mention a few things:  
> \- in case it was unclear or someone got the wrong impression, tifa and rude _aren't_ married, just dating; reno's choice of words was pure sarcasm and teasing  
>  \- i do plan to write a multi-chaptered story detailing some of the past events mentioned within this ficlet, i.e.: exactly what happened with zack and reno, how cloud is involved, etc; this is just a little teaser partially designed to gauge reactions and/or pique interest in that whole story arc  
> \- in regards to zack 'recalling the eightfold path': this wasn't simply me being witty, he's actually buddhist in this verse  
> \- in regards to when zack calls tifa 'mami': he is latino and does speak spanish fluently
> 
> comments, questions, and criticism are all welcome, babes ♥


End file.
